1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for coupling a memory device to a processing unit. The invention relates further to a corresponding method and a corresponding computer program for accessing a memory device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Search algorithms are components of many applications and may have considerable impact on the overall performance. Most search algorithms involve multiple steps that each process a different part of an input key and each involve a memory access. One example is a tree search, in which a tree is “walked” in multiple steps, each involving the selection of a branch from a parent node to a child node based on some portion of the input key, until some final node has been reached. Each branch to a next tree node involves a memory access to obtain information for the search algorithm (e.g., address of parent node, number of child nodes and their addresses). All the memory accesses involved in a single search operation are dependent on each other. As a result, the individual latencies of all these memory accesses will contribute to the total latency of a single search operation.
New generations of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)-based memory systems are able to increase the total memory throughput, while the access latency is improved in a very limited way. Application of caches can be used to decrease access latency, however, only for data having spatial and temporal locality properties.
It is an object of the invention to provide improved solutions for accessing a memory device.